The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him.

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.

Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man

And it has always been a mystery, and I’ve marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul...

Escute mais isso. Por outro lado, forças jovens, frescas, sucumbem em vão por falta de apoio, e isso aos milhares, e isso em toda parte! Cem, mil boas ações e iniciativas que poderiam ser implementadas...

Peaasi on elu, ainult elu – selle lakkamatu ja lõpmatu avastamine, mitte sugugi avastus ise!

Something new and unexpected, something hitherto unknown and undreamt of, had taken place in him. He did not so much understand with his mind as feel instinctively with the full force of his emotions that...

Sono proprio i piccoli particolari, di solito, a rovinare ogni cosa…

It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was...

Though these young men unhappily fail tounderstand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest ofall sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years oftheir seething youth to hard...

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated…

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is...

The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its...

And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance...

I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who...

There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to...

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognises that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and...

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead. Just used-up shells.

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.

You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.

I worship her, Alyosha, worship her. Only she doesn’t see it. No, she still thinks I don’t love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the...

E ke vene re, Seriozha? Sikur qesh me ty duket, kurse ne te vertete nuk te qesh, te do…

Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, ‘on its meek eyes,’ everyone must have seen it. It’s...

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for...

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

I can’t bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

x” in an indeterminate equation. I am one of life’s ghosts, who has lost all the ends and the beginnings, and even at last forgotten what to call myself. You are laughing . . ....

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary...

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself...

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and...

Feeling my own humiliation in my heart like the sharp prick of a needle.

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

The Russian soul is a dark place.

Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind...

What is a Socialist?- That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and everyone has any religion and laws he likes best. You are not old enough to...

if [God] doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

But in the end I’d marry her to the one she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That’s how it is.

He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause...

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

perchè non c’è nessun altro dal quale andare! Bisogna pure che ogni uomo abbia qualche posto dove andare. Poichè ci sono momenti in cui assolutamente bisogna andare da qualche parte!

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning…